Controversy: Electronic Voice Phenomena

Electronic Voice Phenomenon, commonly known as EVP, is the recording of errant noises or voice messages to either analog or digital recorders with what appears to be no earthly explanation. Most believers of EVP maintain these are messages from beyond the grave. They point to things such as "missing frequencies" or "frequency shifts" in a spectrum analysis of the recording as proof that no human alive could have spoken these words, or they offer the proof that the recording seems to answer a question asked of the "ghost" being sought. These recordings are made when the recorder is alone, or under what is purported to be "controlled" circumstances. Often ghost hunters will record an EVP as their proof that an area is haunted.—David Federlein

The term is used in the plural as Electronic Voice Phenomena (EVP). It is correct to say "EVP are" rather than "EVPs". It is also correct to say "the study of EVP is." The term was coined by Coline Smythe in the 1970s as the singular as a less personal replacement for "Raudive Voices." Sarah Estep used the plural form when she started the AA-EVP in 1982. A survey of usage on EVP related websites will show a majority using it in the plural. For instance, the very out-dated CSI (skeptic) article here, About.com and The Anomalist.

EVP are objective phenomena which occur in technological devices, and as such, the study of EVP is technology-intensive. Once the existence of voice-like sounds is established, the next question in the study is how the voices are formed and their origin. Such a study requires an understanding of physics, electronics, linguistics, and because physical science has not provided the necessary models to address a possible greater reality, metaphysics. Of course, there is a huge human factor for which psychologists are qualified to study, but that qualification alone does not prepare parapsychologists for a study involving the other factors.

An introduction to EVP might be worded as:

Electronic Voice Phenomena (EVP) are anomalous, intelligible speech produced in electronic devices. They may be heard as a real-time output but are more generally heard on review of a subsequent recording. No currently understood physical processes account for the existence of EVP. In Transform EVP, available sound is changed to simulate the voice, while in techniques using synthesized voice, random processes are thought to be influenced to cause selection of the voice fragments necessary for EVP formation.

EVP practitioners report that the voice may respond to specific questions with correct answers, sometimes express endearing sentiments as if the originator knows the practitioner, and may provide information which is subsequently shown to be meaningful.

Friedrich Jürgenson is credited with discovering EVP in 1959^[2] and Konstantin Raudive is credited with introducing EVP to the English-speaking world with the publication of his book, Breakthrough.^[3] Since that beginning, EVP has become a commonly used tool for hauntings investigation, contacting deceased loved ones, information gathering and researching what are described as the etheric aspects of reality. While these applications are fast becoming common place, theories explaining how EVP are formed and who is causing them remain mostly conjecture. The theories that are currently receiving the most attention are the Survival Hypothesis, Quantum-Holographic or "echoes of the past"^[4] and thoughts of the living.

Cross modulation of radio frequencies produces the same effect as EVP. Toasters, coffee makers, guitar effects pedals, tube amplifiers, or any other analog electronics pick up errant AM and FM transmissions combining them in much the same way as a summing amplifier would in a mixing console, through faulty ground loops or poorly engineered components not properly shielded from RF noise. When digital recording media is introduced, problems of poor programming or fragmented memory (RAM) increase the complexity of the recorded errant signal. That EVP believers argue certain frequencies are missing from the recording inherent to human speech, or that those frequencies have shifted, is most likely due to phase cancellation occurring between the combined recorded signals, or errors in the digital conversion of analog signals—David Federlein

RF artifacts: Cross modulation is an artifact of Radio-Frequency (RF) processing technology. The net effect or recording cross modulated signals is that a radio signal has been detected and information in it has been recorded.

Many electrical or electronic device is potentially capable of detecting and deheterodyning RF energy so that it is audible. If the RF signal is intelligible without further processing--not digital or broadband--it may result in the production of an audible sound from the device. As with cross modulation, this is an RF artifact.

EVP are defined as anomalous, intelligible speech recorded in or produced by electronic devices, and for which no currently understood physical explanations can account. Recorded noise or noise mistaken as voice is not, by definition, EVP. As such, RF signals that are recorded during an EVP recording session are considered RF signals that do not satisfy the definition of EVP. [1]

Nevertheless, research has been conducted to assure that EVP are not just recorded RF. Mil-Spec Faraday Cages have been used. For instance Alexander MacRae as reported in the Journal of the Society for Psychical Research with the article: Report of an Electronic Voice Phenomenon Experiment inside a Double-Screened Room. good example of an often replicated test is described in an article by Bill Weisensale.

Digital processing artifacts:The "official" discovery of EVP was in 1959 when only analog recorders were being used. The first reported detection of EVP in a digital recorder was probably in a Panasonic RR-DR60 digital voice recorder. Current research indicates that, once digitized, the anomalous utterance remains intact, and that digitizing EVP previously recorded using analog technology results in a "faithful" reproduction of the original without additional anomalous information. As such, there is no empirical support for the idea that EVP are formed as an artifact of digital processing.

Missing frequencies in EVP: Current understanding is that EVP are formed in technology capable of processing audio--with or without a recording capability. Analysis of the voice in transform EVP has shown that it is formed by changing available audio-frequency energy into voice. The noise is seen as a typical noise waveform, but when it is transformed into voice, octaves similar to the formant found in biologically formed speech are found, but in "novel" arrangements that computer analysis programs designed to illustrate the shape of the vocal track sometimes produce impossible arrangements of the mouth. See this article. Noise profile analysis of audio recordings containing EVP clearly show an anomalous change in concentration of energy during the utterance that is not seen in other parts of the signal.

It should be noted that EVP formed via voice synthesis technology does not employ noise for voice formation, but instead, utilizes random processes to select synthesized voice fragments to produce meaningful utterances. While in transform EVP, the utterance is thought to be formed from available sound energy, synthesized voice EVP are believed to be formed by the manipulation of the random process controlling fragment selection.

So EVP are not the noise, but are the noise transformed to simulate speech. Earthly explanations have been proposed to explain how the voices are formed, and research is beginning to substantiate at least parts of these theories. Who is imitating EVP remains an open question, but at this time, no physical means has been identified that could account for the voices.

This refers to a common perceptual phenomenon whereby we spontaneously perceive connections and find meaningfulness in unrelated things. In other words, it involves seeing or hearing patterns where in reality, none exist. A visual example is the Rorschach Inkblot test...(Apophenia is virtually synonymous with what has been called Pareidolia...)^[5]—James E. Alcock, PhD

There is no doubt that mundane sounds are often reported as EVP. It is a question of education that is aggravated by the subjective nature of EVP. By controlling the recording environment to assure that no unexpected audio artifacts are involved, and using blind listening tests, it has been established that at least some recordings reported as EVP are anomalous and are experienced as actual words of human speech. In a series of fully blinded online listening tests, an average of 25.2% of the words thought to be in the examples were correctly reported (percent recognized words: %Rw.

Stats

• 3 trials
• 17 examples (One mundane voice and one radio sweep, the rest are transform EVP made with a plain old recorder.)
• 510 participants
• 9,002 possible words
• 2,7271 words correctly recognized.
• 25.2% Overall %Rw

Often EVP proponents have pointed to the fact that digital recordings also pick up EVP as proof they are from beyond the grave. What is not noted however is that the actual microphone recording to the digital device is an analog piece of equipment subject to cross modulation in cases of cheap engineering. Poor analog to digital converters, fragmented ram, and faulty programming of lower quality digital devices either compound a cross modulated source, or create new splices of previous recordings added in to the new recordings. Interestingly enough when EVP proponents are explaining how to capture an EVP, often using high quality and properly grounded and shielded equipment is discouraged in favor of cheap and low quality recorders. While it is suggested to use a new tape every time (in the case of tape recordings) the recorders themselves are low quality and often inexpensive units that most likely are not up to the tolerance standards of professional sound engineers. This seems to suggest that EVP proponents may not understand the workings of radio broadcasting and its effect on poorly engineered equipment all that well, and are actually engaging in a controlled misuse of their electronics.
Given that there are billions of radio transmissions filling our airwaves a device that is engineered poorly or has a faulty ground is almost assuredly going to produce strange combinations of human voice recordings that are somewhat mangled and in poor quality. Conversely the very human need to hear what we want to when looking for meaning in things would imply the physics of EVP alone is not to blame. Often ghost hunters and EVP believers want to connect with someone as proof of an afterlife, and may read into whatever recordings are captured something that isn't there.—David Federlein

Using low quality equipment for EVP: Since the statistics/studies documenting education and quality of equipment available to EVP researchers do not exist Federlein appears to be making a "Mine is bigger/better than yours" argument. I have addressed some of these points above so I this section will focus on the reason EVP practitioners are advised to us low-quality equipment.

The working hypothesis for how EVP are formed leads to a "Best Practice" recommending the use of equipment most likely to produce results. As the phenomena are understood today, the voices are seen to be formed by transforming noise into a simulation of human speech. For that to occur, audio frequency energy is required and inexpensive recorders tend to fill this need. It is simply illogical to waste money on a high-quality recorder if the practitioner plans to inject noise that effectively degrades the quality in order to use the device as intended.

Radio frequency contamination: There is no question that hand-held, battery-operated recorders are prone to detecting/recording stray radio signals. However, reports of broadcast signals actually being recorded have been rare and there has been little danger of those being mistaken as EVP.

Even more poignant to the debate of how perception shapes what we hear is the research done by Haskins Laboratories on Sine Wave Synthesis in which Philip Rubin, Robert E. Remez and Jennifer Pardo ask the question "Which acoustic elements are essential for the perception of speech?" The answer they discovered was "None." Their project took core synthesized sinewave tones matching the core tones of an acoustically recorded spoken sentence. In their research it was found that listeners who were asked to identify sinewave signals often reported them as bad electronical music or radio interference. However when asked to transcribe a "strangely-synthesized sentence," listeners readily reported the words of the natural utterances on which the sinewave signals were modeled. The implications of this finding reach beyond simply being able to recognize tones as speech. If natural random cross modulated or fragmented digital recordings happen to match any number of millions of naturally occurring frequencies within human speech, it is likely someone will read the correlating words into something that is not there.—David Federlein

Basically, this is the Jimi Hendrix argument. He is the musician famous for making his guitar sound like it was talking. Again distinguishing between EVP as defined and sound mistaken as EVP, it is common for people still learning to work with EVP to attribute meaning to many sounds that, on closer examination, are not meaningful utterances. Possible reasons for this are discussed in the article: Radio sweep case study

Altered perception and Story Telling In EVP formation, a companion article intended to explore how EVP are formed, it is noted that there are a number of ways mundane sounds are mistaken as EVP. The most common way follows the process:

• The practitioner asks for information during the recording.
• Sounds are heard, either live or on the resulting recording.
• The practitioner “hears” what was expected in the sounds.
• The practitioner reports what was “heard” and listeners hear what was suggested.

This is not malicious intent, but a natural response to trying very hard to find a particular kind of information in a chaotic signal. This appears to be especially common in if the chaotic sound has a staccato pace, as we have seen the effect in both radio sweep and EVPmaker output. An interesting explanation as to how practitioners and listeners might find EVP where there are none is found in the Gestalt Laws of Perceptual Organization, which includes:

The Law of Proximity: Stimulus elements that are closed together tend to be perceived as a group

The Law of Similarity: Similar stimuli tend to be grouped, this tendency can even dominate grouping due to proximity

The Law of Closure: Stimuli tend to be grouped into complete figures

The Law of Good Continuation: Stimuli tend to be grouped as to minimize change or discontinuity

The Law of Symmetry: Regions bound by symmetrical boarders tend to be perceived as coherent figures

The Law Simplicity: Ambiguous stimuli tend to be resolved in favor of the simplest

A reasonable conclusion is that the practitioner heard what was expected. “Big Circle” is an important part of the AA-EVP culture and hearing the term after asking for someone in the Big Circle to comment is natural, considering the low quality of the sound file. The next step would be to imagine a story that would allow what the practitioner thought was said to make sense. Next, the listeners simply conformed by hearing what they were told was present in the recording.

Human perception is very complex and psychologists are still learning how people understand sounds. People involved in Etheric Studies are very interested in this question, but it should be separated from the question as to whether or not EVP exists. Sounds thought to be EVP are shown to have many of the acoustical characteristics of voice, but intelligibility is not the only criterion. Forensic-quality computer programs have been used to compare the voice of EVP with the previously recorded voice of the person though to be speaking with a high percentage of agreement. For instance, in one study:

A Comparison Between Presumed Paranormal Psychophonic, Telephonic direct Radio Voices by Paolo Presi Laboratorio Interdisciplinare Di Ricerca Biopsicocibernetica For a transform EVP:The electroacoustic measures used in the presence of significant structural anomalies in communication that deviate from normal human speech the human ear the sounds concerned are uttered and apparently quite similar to the human voice. Page 6

For a telephone EVP: In completion of this extensive exercise, the ‘One-to-Many’ program identified the acoustic map of Edna's alleged paranormal voice with the acoustic map of Edna's voice while alive. This identification was the only one in the whole exercise (involving 909 acoustic maps) that exceeded a similarity level of 99%. This justified us in concluding that the sample sent to us as Edna’s telephonic voice indeed appeared to resemble beyond reasonable doubt her voice in life. Page 12

EVP belief was taken one step further by believers at the American Association for Electronic Voice Phenomena when they began to offer a computer program for download called EVP Maker. This program admittedly uses a random number generator to change an existing .WAV format recording on your computer to add EVP. Of course, that the ghost wasn't talking in the original recording seems to have no meaning to someone that believes a computer program written by a human can produce paranormal effects. (Sometime in 2005 AAEVP removed the referenced website describing how to download and use EVP Maker. The included link is to the archived copy of the site from the Internet Archive.)—David Federlein

Point of order: The link offered by Federlein is no longer valid because the AA-EVP requested that the archive site stop archiving aaevp.com pages. At issue is that this is an evolving subject, and as pages become obsolete, they are changed or deleted. Having old pages in the archive contradicts this expectation. "Deleted" means "deleted"!

In fact, the AA-EVP has never offered any program. EVPmaker is a computer program written by Stefan Bion and made available for no charge here. The AA-EVP talked about EVPmaker based on what was understood at the time; that is, that it is a tool designed to record for EVP. As more became known about it, the AA-EVP began recommending that it only be used by people who are familiar with EVP, as it tends to produce many false positives. (A "false positive" EVP is a mundane sound mistakenly reported as EVP.)

Federlein's sarcasm aside, the program depends on the use of a random process to select segments of an audio buffer containing the input file. "Live voice" for the input file remains a problem for research, but when synthesized voice fragments--allophones and phonemes--EVP are still produced and this is considered a viable approach for research. An example of EVP recorded with EVPmaker using allophones is here.

In regards to Edison's often (mis)used quote, it seems to be used not only to try and provide legitimacy (Edison was a respected scientist therefore an appeal to his authority is an attempt to bring legitimacy to EVP beliefs) but is completely out of context. Nowhere does he say recording devices themselves are the conduit to the afterlife, he merely states a machine invented to be sensitive enough to ghosts would be able to "record" a response to whatever stimuli this machine is designed to register. At no time was recording media or radio wave transmissions ever touted as proof of afterlife by the inventors or manufacturers of related equipment. In fact, cross modulation and malfunction of equipment was and is well understood by those that invented, manufacture and professionally use radio, television, recording, broadcasting and production equipment.—David Federlein

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—David Federlein

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Serious parapsychologists today show virtually no interest in EVP, and modern reports in the parapsychological literature find no evidence of anything paranormal in such recordings.—James E. Alcock, PhD^[5]

However nonsensical, this is essentially a true statement. The Parapsychological Association began with a focus on psychical phenomena (psi functioning) and now defines its field as "... the scientific and scholarly study of three kinds of unusual events (ESP, mind-matter interaction, and survival), which are associated with human experience." It further elaborates about survival with "...phenomena suggestive of survival after bodily death, including near-death experiences, apparitions, and reincarnation." Most parapsychologists hold an academic degree in psychology and/or other aspects of the humanities.

As is noted above EVP are objective phenomena and the first questions are how the voices occur. Studying them involves understanding of physics, electronics, linguistics, and because physical science has not provided the necessary models to address the subject, metaphysics. Of course, there is a huge human factor for which psychologists are qualified to study, but that qualification alone does not prepare parapsychologists for a study involving the other factors.

As a director of an organization charged with the study of trans-etheric phenomena, I have approached a number of well-known parapsychologists seeking their support as advisors. In each instance, I received a gracious "EVP is outside of my area of expertise," response. Of course, we continue to need the help in the human factor areas, but the response is fundamentally honest and correct. As a field of study, parapsychology is concerned with survival in so far as it is experienced by a person. EVP is After-Death Communication (ADC), and the only studies by parapsychologists we have found have been for spontaneous ADC and not induced ADC as we consider EVP.

Serious parapsychologists today show virtually no interest in EVP because it is outside of their field. That is why we have recommended Etheric Studies as a means of distinguishing the study of human potential and psi functioning from the study of trans-etheric influences and survival of personality as it relates to the possibility of a greater reality.

Two studies conducted by the psychology professor, Imants Barušs, offer an object lesson as to why people trained in psychology should probably not be conducting studies about objective phenomena. As is discussed in the Wikisynergy article, Controversy: ITC Articles by Imants Barušs the researcher did not understand the mechanics of conducting a recording session to collect EVP, or the state of the art for trans-etheric communication. Since the Journal of Scientific Exploration is a peer-reviewed journal, it also illustrates the inability of a society to evaluate a subject that is far outside of its member's experience.

[edit] Another example

Excerpts from "Charles Tart - a man of many passions," an interview by Simon Forsyth in the Psychic Times. (Retrieved 21 June 2009)

Concerning EVP: "Frankly, I'd like it to believe that EVP is a promising area of study because I'm a very technical kind of person myself. However, I have to say that in the few occasions in which I have dipped into that literature, I have found it to be very poor quality research. For example, I used to be a radio engineer so I have a lot of practical experience with radio."

Dr. Tart goes on to describe how "...if you listen to white noise and static for a long period of time you are going to hear all sorts of things because you're hallucinating. That is what static does to the brain." And, "Now, as a psychologist I can understand why they don't use a box which prevents radio waves from getting through. People are generally not rational about the evidence for Survival. The last time I gave a talk on the evidence for Survival I told people I was speaking as a scientist and of course scientists are supposed to be objective and I would try and be objective but I don't think that anybody who is going to die can be completely objective about the question of Survival!

"Now, I don't condemn EVP phenomena completely. I'm sure that researchers get something related to Survival once in a while for psychological reasons. Psychic phenomena do happen once in a while and they are more likely to happen if you have a belief system that makes it ok for them to have it. But I wish the evidence were better. But I have never seen enough to encourage me to even look at it thoroughly."

[edit] Comment

In a private email, Dr. Tart stressed the need for evidence that EVP were collected in properly shielded environment before he would even consider further examining the evidence for EVP. I attempted to connect him with Alexander MacRae who had completed such tests but I have no visibility as to the results.

This is a miner discourse in the scheme of things, but the interview remains on the Internet and ranks third in a Google search for "Tart, EVP." Having a respected parapsychologists discount EVP on such unsubstantial grounds without rebuttal leaves the reader with little choice but to assume the good doctor knows what he is talking about.

As has been discussed here, radio frequency signal contamination has been acknowledged and accounted for by recording for EVP in environments shielded from radio signals. MacRae has had an article concerning an EVP experiment he conduced in a Faraday Cage published in the peer reviewed Journal of the Society for Psychical Research titled Report of an Electronic Voice Phenomenon Experiment Inside a Double-Screened Room. EVP have also been rated as appropriate to questions asked an circumstances and some examples have been compare with recorded voice made of the person while still in the physical [2].

...we process information in two different ways through two more or less separate parts of our brain and nervous system. On the one hand, part of our brain works on a very intuitive / emotional / automatic level, and on the other hand, another part of our brain works according to the logic and rationality that we develop over our lifetimes. These two systems often produce contrary results, and this is especially so where paranormal phenomena are involved. The “believer” removes the contradiction by bringing the intellect into line with the intuitive interpretation, that is, by coming to accept the paranormal – in this case, the voices – as reality, and thereby reshaping the intellectual understanding of the world so that belief in such phenomena appears to be rational. Over time, an impregnable belief system develops which is supported by a very substantial base of personal experience (interpreted in such a way as to support the paranormal belief), as well as anecdotal evidence provided by others.^[5]—James E. Alcock, PhD

Dime store psychology. Where is the evidence?